Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
by MrsTater
Summary: Beauty and the Beast: No one does first meetings on Christmas Eve like Gaston...


**_A/N: Written for the 2011 Disney_Advent at LiveJournal._**

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><p><strong>Meet Me Under the Mistletoe<strong>

"Uh, Gaston?" Lefou nudged Gaston's elbow where it rested on the arm of his custom made horn and hide chair in front of the roaring fire. "The girls are standing under the mistletoe."

"I know," Gaston replied, not moving except to raise his pewter tankard to his lips and take a swig of beer. The identical triplet barmaids were directly in his line of sight, not ten feet away. He'd have to be blind not to see them. And deaf, not to hear their giggling.

As was Lefou. "I, uh, think they want you to join them." He gave Gaston another prod. "Under the mistletoe. To, uh, you know." He gulped. "Kiss."

"I know," Gaston said again, and again he drank while the blondes puckered up their lips and poked out their perky chests to try and tempt them over to them.

"Well, uh, are you gonna? Meet them under the mistletoe? And kiss?"

Gaston jerked his arm, shaking off Lefou's fingers, which were fat as sausages and just as greasy. "No, Lefou. Not tonight."

Lefou's tongue lolled out of his mouth as he looked from Gaston to the girls and back to Gaston again, reminding him of his fat, retired hunting dogs under the table begging for scraps. "Tomorrow night?"

"Not any night."

The little man's mouth hung open. "But, Gaston! It's _Christmas Eve_. It's tradition. If _you_ don't get a little romance on Christmas Eve, how can _anyone _hope to? "

"I know," said Gaston, a little ruefully-and not because he was thinking Lefou could _never_ hope to get any romance, not even the sloppy seconds he was so painfully obviously hoping he would get if Gaston rejected the triplets. "But I'm done with those silly girls, Lefou. Done with our silly little games and threesomes..."

"Uh..." Lefou's nasally voice was an unwelcome distraction from the visions of three identical _sugarplums_ dancing through Gaston's head. "If there's three of them and one of you," he went on, counting off on his fingers, "wouldn't that be an, uh, _foursome_?"

"Huh?" But Gaston scarcely heard Lefou's rambling attempt to re-explain his little math lesson as the triplets changed to a new provocative pose that put their cute little derrières to their best advantage. He remembered Christmases past when those bums waggled on his red velvet covered lap while he played the role of Père Noël and asked whether they'd been naughty or nice, rewarding either answer by helping them hang their stockings by the chimney with care. After he'd helped them remove said stockings from their shapely legs, of course.

Feeling his resolve slipping, Gaston tightened his grasp on the handle of his tankard so hard that it snapped off, drawing the attention of everyone in the lodge-everyone who hadn't already been paying attention to him, anyway, which wasn't many people-when the pewter clattered to the floor, dousing Lefou with its contents as he scrambled to save Gaston's beer.

The inebriated patrons roared with laughter, and Gaston reached down to pick up his toady by the back of his necktie, setting Lefou on his feet and then sending him scurrying off to get him a new beer.

Then, stretching his arms over his head and flexing his biceps, to the envy of the men and the adoration of the girls, Gaston announced, "This is the year I settle down. Take a wife." He did a couple of pelvic thrusts. "Make some Gaston Juniors..."

"I'll settle down with you!" cried the triplet in the red dress.

"Take me!" said the one in yellow, shoving her way in front of the one in red.

"I'll have your babies!" volunteered the green one.

Though their romantic interests were in conflict, the triplets were united again as one as they sighed in unison and then sank to the floor in a blonde-haired heap.

"Sorry, girls," said Gaston, looming over them for a moment, then reaching out his big strong hands to help them up. "But how could I ever choose one of you?"

He hadn't really meant it as a compliment, but apparently they all took it as such and swooned again. Gaston had to admit that their lack of brainpower _was_ rather appealing, but it took the three of them together to even come close to matching his good looks, and while the French had practically invented the _menagerie-trois_, they hadn't really gotten onboard with having three wives. Gaston knew; he'd looked into it once, in a fit of desperation.

As he stepped over the colorful pile of unconscious girls, the tavern door opened with a jangle of the bell and a swirl of windblown snow.

Along with something else that made Gaston stop, briefly, in his tracks before he pulled himself together and swaggered over to the girl who was fumbling with the tie of her snow-flecked blue cloak.

"Well, bon_soir_, mademoiselle," said Gaston in his deep, smooth tones that had never failed to stop a female dead in her tracks.

Until now, that was. The girl kept struggling with her cloak, only throwing him the briefest of glances when she returned his greeting. Not long enough for her to fully take in and appreciate the fine specimen of manly beauty that he was, but time for Gaston to see that she had the brownest eyes with the longest lashes he'd ever seen, and for her hood to fall back and reveal hair that shone like polished mahogany.

She was _gorgeous_.

And Gaston fell.

In love, that was.

"Here," he said, "let me help you with that."

"Oh no, monsieur, you don't have to-"

Gaston pulled the cloak from around her shoulders and shucked it at Lefou, who'd just scurried over sloshing a froth-topped tankard of beer. Which spilled all over the girl's cloak as he-typically-got tangled up in it and toppled over like a snared animal.

"If I want a thing done right around here, I have to do it myself," Gaston grumbled, flicking the end of the beer-soaked cloak so that as it unfurled Lefou rolled out of it, and then hanging it on the tree by the door.

"Merci," said the girl, but above her full, pouting lips her delicate nose crinkled as she shrank back toward the door, either because Lefou repulsed her, or because Gaston's take-charge attitude had overwhelmed her. The latter, probably, which he actually found rather appealing, loving the hunt as the walls of his lodge testified. This gorgeous woman on his arm would be his most prized trophy yet.

"So, you're obviously new in town," he said, closing the gap between them with a single stride.

"Yes, we arrived just tonight-"

"I hope you don't mind if I say you're the most beautiful girl ever to grace my tavern. In fact, I bet that's your name, isn't it, _hmm_? Grace?"

If Gaston didn't know better, he'd say the big brown eyes _rolled_. But women did not roll their eyes at him. Something must have caught her attention.

"Erm, actually, it's-"

"No, don't tell me yet!" Gaston put his beefy arm around her petite shoulders and pulled her to the place where the triplets had picked themselves up off the floor; they huddled behind the bar now, clutching hands and exchanging worried glances. "We need to get _properly _acquainted." He waggled his eyebrows. "Under the mistletoe."

The girl dug her heels into the floor, then ducked under his arm and backed to the front door. "I'd rather not."

"Mistletoe allergy?" That was the only reason Gaston could conceive of that a woman wouldn't jump at the chance to partake in that little holiday tradition with him.

"If you're the proprietor, though-"

Her gaze had drifted over his shoulder to the portrait of him over the mantel.

"This _is_ my lodge," he told her, resting his fists on his hips and puffing out his chest. Not that it needed much puffing. "I killed every beast you see mounted on my walls."

"Impressive," she said, glancing over her shoulder to the door. "If I could have a table for two, please-"

"_Two_?"

Gaston's heart sank as he realized that earlier she'd said _we_-she'd arrived in town just tonight with someone else. It hadn't occurred to him before now that the someone else might be a husband. Of course, that wasn't a problem a little "hunting accident" couldn't solve.

"I'm just waiting for my father. He was putting our horse in the stable."

"Her father!" Gaston said to Lefou, who had scurried up to them, two menus in hand. "Did you hear that, Lefou? She's here with her father. Not a husband."

He put his arm around her shoulder again and guided her over toward a table with three chairs, plopping down in one of them the wrong way around, resting his arms on the back so she could see his forearms in all their bulging muscular glory.

"Well, you're name's not Grace," he said. "Let's see if I can guess what it is."

"Belle," she said, absently, waving as the door opened and a man with the physique of a snowman and sporting a white mustache Père Noël would have envied tramped inside. "My name is Belle."

"Belle, hm?" Gaston said. He began to sing in his rich baritone. "I saw my Belle on Christmas Day, the old familiar girls fade away..."

"You sing, too?" said Belle, glancing at the bar, where the triplets were crying noisily into their hankies.

"No one sings like Gaston!" said Lefou.

"What a fine voice," said her father, joining them. He looked hopefully at his daughter.

"Papa," Belle said, blushing prettily, not able to meet Gaston's eyes.

"Handsome, too. I'm Maurice, Monsieur Gaston. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Gaston smirked. He wouldn't even have to ask permission to court the girl. He _hated_ asking for permission. Or asking anything, really. He much preferred when he just told people to do things, and they did them. Like marry him. That was how it would be with Belle, he was sure of it.

"Well, Gaston," she said, "you run a tavern, you kiss girls under the mistletoe, you shoot, you sing...Is there anything you _don't _do?"

He thought for a moment, then said, "Read. But who does _that_?"

"What a shame," Belle said, grinning at her father, "It's my favorite hobby."

For a moment Gaston gaped, horrified, then he shrugged. There wasn't room in the world for _two _perfect people. And anyway, once she was his little wife, Belle wouldn't have time to read, anyway.

"Say, Belle," he said, getting up, "I've been thinking maybe for one of my New Year's resolutions that I ought to try reading more. Any book recommendations?"

"Why, yes, I-"

"Great! I've got to see to the customers-but when you finish your supper, meet me under the mistletoe."

When Gaston looked back at Belle's table a moment later, however, she and her father and the cloak Lefou had spilled beer on were gone. For a moment he glowered, and made excuses to everyone in the pub that Mademoiselle Belle had a severe mistletoe allergy, but then his mouth relaxed into a smile.

_Oh, yes_. The hunt was on.

As was one more threesome, when he found himself unable to resist the charms of the triplets when they cornered him under the mistletoe when they were closing up for the night. After all, he wasn't _really_ making a New year's resolution to read more...his real one could be to do..._this_...less.

And, of course, to woo and marry Belle.


End file.
